Cult Balance Thread

Who · Post Post #19 (isolation #0) » Sat Jun 21, 2014 6:01 am

In post 10, mykonian wrote:There's a couple of issues beyond "my allignment changes I won't play to win because of that" which might depend on your players discipline. I don't think that's the worst.

One is the rate of conversion. With each recruitment, town gets one townie less, scum get one more. In effect, that's at least double as effective as a nightkill. Nightkills are huge balancewise already, balancing a game where scum would get two kills is really rough. So that's one thing you are up again. The second is that cult games are boring the moment cult gets critical mass, as town are waiting for the inevitable loss. Giving an escape route a la cult leader makes the game less mafia, gives cult members a reason to get lynched, makes the game trivial.

That could easily be fixed by making the entire cult lovers with each other. If the town lynches any, they win.

Who · Post Post #22 (isolation #1) » Sat Jun 21, 2014 8:00 am

In post 20, Eden wrote:
In post 19, Who wrote:
In post 10, mykonian wrote:There's a couple of issues beyond "my allignment changes I won't play to win because of that" which might depend on your players discipline. I don't think that's the worst.

One is the rate of conversion. With each recruitment, town gets one townie less, scum get one more. In effect, that's at least double as effective as a nightkill. Nightkills are huge balancewise already, balancing a game where scum would get two kills is really rough. So that's one thing you are up again. The second is that cult games are boring the moment cult gets critical mass, as town are waiting for the inevitable loss. Giving an escape route a la cult leader makes the game less mafia, gives cult members a reason to get lynched, makes the game trivial.
That could easily be fixed by making the entire cult lovers with each other. If the town lynches any, they win.
well that's ultra-townsided if i've ever seen it

no matter how poorly town plays at any point prior to LYLO, if they're ~20% better than random lynching at LYLO they win

How so?

Chances of winning at LYLO are 1/4, 2/6, or 3/8 depending on how large the game is and how the cult plays. Furthermore, the town don't know when it's LYLO, since the cult might not recruit every night.

Who · Post Post #38 (isolation #2) » Wed Apr 11, 2018 7:08 am

If you do that you should make it white flag. Scum hunting becomes terrible when there’s only one person left (the extreme version of the “reliving day one” problem) and also if the town just no-lynches they all win.

Who · Post Post #40 (isolation #3) » Wed Apr 11, 2018 8:00 am

In post 39, callforjudgement wrote:White flag is a good idea.

Repeatedly no-lynching so that everyone wins is actually a pretty funny tactic, but I don't think it works (the remaining townies get endgamed once cult controls half the town, as they can stop the no-lynching during the day).

If there's only one cultist left, that's everyone but one person, hence the need for white flag.